


Too Much Damn Credit

by heisenfox



Series: The Journey Home [2]
Category: The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Coda, Inspired by Novel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 14:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5094461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heisenfox/pseuds/heisenfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This has been Chris Beck, and I am deeply sorry you had to sit through this entire thing. Over and out."</p><p>Set between Human Contact and All Things Considered. (I re-ordered the series, sorry if it causes confusion!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much Damn Credit

LOG ENTRY: MISSION DAY 689

Uh, this is Dr. Chris Beck, and this is my first video log. Sorry I haven’t been making any of these, but since I’ve got stacks of mission reports in actual paper form that you’ll all be seeing I didn’t really see the point. Commander Lewis has tried ordering me to, but once she saw my stacks of reports, she backed off; the only reason I’m doing one now is because today was...today was a _Day._ And I need someone to vent to that won’t accidentally spill all of this to the crew, and especially to Watney; if he sees this after we’re back on Earth, whatever. He’s no longer my patient at that point, and we’re not sharing a bunk either. I’ll try to keep this short, for your sakes and mine.

As you all well know, we managed to successfully rescue Mark Watney from Mars two days ago, and, man, I thought _that_ was a Day. Since, y’know, I had to do the retrieval and all. But as luck would have it, Watney is just full of surprises. Not the nice kind of surprise, like the fact that he survived Mars for a year and a half, or that he managed to grow potatoes on a lifeless hunk of rock. No, I’m talking about the kind of surprises that make you want to just _throttle_ someone.

Look, I understand the guy has been through a lot. I was completely prepared to cut him a fuckload of slack the moment he came on-board the Hermes, I really was. Honestly, I only insisted he let me check him, take a shower, and then let me wrap his ribs. That’s really not asking much, if you ask me. And he complied! I thought for sure that meant everything was going to be okay. See, Mark _never_ complied with my medical suggestions before. If he ever got sick or had anything that was cause for alarm, I had to get Commander Lewis to _order_ him to listen to me. It wasn’t very often, but the fact that it happened more than twice tells me that he’s not the type of guy to take advice readily.

I probably sound like a petulant child right now; yeah, yeah, I’m very aware of the pitch my voice takes on when I’m complaining about things, thank you very much. But it’s like I said, I need to vent to _someone._ Anyway, after I’d checked his ribs, I advised him to consider drastically cutting down the amount of time he was going to be spending in the rooms with gravity regs. That’s not to say that I don’t want him to enjoy himself by spending time in the rec room or whatever. I just figured since he had the very obvious option of 0G and less strain on his very injured ribs, he’d take it.

I told him -- and I _know_ Melissa was nodding behind me when I said this -- that the longer he spent in rooms with gravity regs, the more damage that would be done to his healing body. I warned him explicitly that this could result in punctured lungs. Does he listen? NO! Of course he doesn’t fucking listen! He’s Mark Watney, he survived Mars alone, he grew potatoes on a glorified boulder! What does he need my medical expertise for, right?!

Sorry. I didn’t mean to flip out like that. Deep breaths, Chris, deep breaths. Don’t live up to the Dr. “Bossy” nickname they’ve given you, man. You’re better than that. Anyway, enough talking to myself; I don’t need NASA to know all of my neuroses. He totally ignored all of that information, and proceeded to spend the entire day in the rec room. To be fair to Watney, I lost track of the amount of time he spent in the room because he...well, he had his feet in my lap. Again, I might add. I guess I just assumed the idiot would be smart enough to tell me if he was in pain so I could check to make sure he wasn’t risking further injury and so I could give him some pain meds.

I give this crew too much damn credit sometimes.

It wasn’t until he was in so much pain that it literally caused him to pass out and his body to seize that I even knew anything was bothering him. He fell off the couch, and in a panic, I had Vogel and Martinez lift him onto the coffee table. By the time we had him steady and I was in the process of ripping his shirt off, he was drifting in and out of consciousness. I decided I had to focus, so I took that as a good sign, even though I still had no idea what was going on. The moment I got his shirt off and started feeling at his ribs, though, I put it all together.

By spending so much time in the awkwardly cramped position he was in on the couch, he was holding his ribs at a precarious angle. In a room with a gravity regulator. His ribs were under more pressure than they’d been under on Mars, and on top of that, he was contorting his severely emaciated body. His broken ribs were threatening to pierce his lungs -- as I had _previously warned him_ was a possibility -- and one fractured piece of them was on the verge of breaking the skin and full on protruding from his body. Yeah. It was pretty goddamn horrific.

To be frank, I’m still a little shocked he let it get so bad. I don’t know if it was on purpose, like some great act of defiance, or if he got so used to pain back on Mars that he didn’t even flinch at this. I know he said something off-handedly to Martinez about dipping potatoes in Vicodin when he ran out of ketchup, so I’ve got at least some sort of reference of his being in pain out there. Plus, he mentioned something about rigging a bath for his back pain at some point. I guess if that pain was bad enough, he wouldn’t necessarily realize how bad this particular pain was. Still, he scared the shit out of me.

I could get away with ending the log there and letting you all think he scared me so much because I just went to all that trouble to save him, but...I’m already spilling my guts. Why stop now, right?

He scared the shit out of me because I don’t think I can handle losing him again. It was _ages_ before we found out he was alive back on Mars, and despite the amount of time that had passed, I wasn’t close to getting over it. The whole crew...we’re really close; you’ve gotta be on this kind of mission. Vogel’s kids send me emails sometimes and they’re all addressed to Uncle Chris, Johanssen’s parents always ask after me when they email her, Martinez’s wife keeps saying she’s going to cook me a proper meal when we’re back on Earth, and Lewis’s husband seems to think I’m the one of us most likely to give in and run a 5k with him. We’re family, plain and simple.

But Mark…Mark always felt like _more._ I don’t know what more. I don’t know what he is to me, or what he has the potential to be. I just know that with him, it always felt different. Like there’s this undercurrent of _something_. Anyway, I guess that’s enough confessional today. Bless me, NASA, for I have sinned? Sorry. Bad joke. Maybe I’ll make another one of these sometime before we get back to Earth. Maybe not. I guess that all depends on Watney.

This has been Chris Beck, and I am deeply sorry you had to sit through this entire thing. Over and out.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not 100% sure how I feel about this! I wanted to try my hand at tossing in a little bit of Chris's POV, and this is what came out. Hopefully it's not terrible. Constructive criticism, praise, etc, always most welcome! Self beta'd so any mistakes are my own!


End file.
